What's New

New Database: Reaxys

Primarily for students and faculty in organic chemistry, Reaxys provides reaction and substance data searching along with synthesis planning. It is an intuitive web-application with powerful and flexible search capabilities, including searching by reaction, substance, and/or numeric property data. Reaxys integrates all chemical information from the former Beilstein and Gmelin databases. For more information see this Reaxys Overview or the Reaxys Quick Reference Guide (PDF).  If you have any questions about using this database, please contact your subject librarian.

OED Online Relaunched

Oxford University Press has relaunched the Oxford English Dictionary Online, with improved functionality and design, and new content.  Here are some of the enhancements:

• Instantly search and browse by subject, region, usage, or by language of origin
• Integration of the Historical Thesaurus of the OED allows you to click through from entries to synonyms by date
• Explore the major sources of the OED (writers and works) and trace their roles in shaping the language
• View summary information for each entry, includng timelines of sense development, quotation evidence, and links to related entries
• Links at entry level to related resources such as the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
• My Oxford English Dictionary feature allows you to create your own profile and save entries and searches

If you have any problems with or questions about using this or any other Library-provided database, please contact your subject librarian.

 

New Resource: GPO MetaLib

In October 2010, the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) unveiled its implementation of MetaLib for searching across various government-sponsored databases simultaneously.  Currently, 53 government-sponsored databases may be accessed through this interface. You will be able to find articles, books and other publications offered to the public by various U.S.  government agencies since 1976.

GPO MetaLib is most easily accessed by using the Find Database function from the Libraries’ Databases tab (search under “G” for “GPO MetaLib”).  The link will take you to GPO MetaLib’s Advanced Search feature, where you can use the radio buttons to choose databases by subject category, like “Environment” or “Business + Economy.”  Or, you can use the tabs at the top to choose an Expert search, where you’ll be able to create a custom set of databases to search, or choose the A-Z Resource list to search databases individually.  For more information, you can read GPO’s press release. 

Of course, GPO MetaLib won't solve every question about government information resources!  The Library also offers links to many government resources individually.  For further information, contact your Subject Librarian or Barbara Rehkop, the Government Documents librarian.

Medline is Now Available in Web of Knowledge

We have always had choices about the interface we use for PubMed. Most PubMed citations can be found in Google and Google Scholar, merged with chemistry in SciFinder Scholar, merged with the web in Scirus and Sciverse (Elsevier search engines), and in paid interfaces such as EBSCOhost and Ovid. Using Medline via Web of Knowledge will allow you to search Web of Science, INSPEC, and PubMed in one easy search.

More more information, please see this post on the Biology Library News blog.

 

Interface Update for EBSCO Databases

The Libraries subscribe to numerous databases through EBSCO, including PsycINFO, MLA Bibliography, Academic Search Premier, and Business Source Complete.  EBSCO has released updates to the search interface, and you'll find some changes next time you use one of these databases:

• Limiting function (full text only, peer-reviewed only) is now on the LEFT side of the results screen
• You can also change how results are sorted - by date rather than relevance, which is now the default
• The Get it! button has moved to the left side.

There hasn't been any change with functionality, only display.

Also, if you hadn't noticed it before, there is a chat box on the right side of the results screen.  If you have a question, chat us up!   But please click the green arrow in that box to pop it out of the window, as otherwise the chat box will disappear when you move to a different screen in your database search.

Ask your subject librarian if you have questions about these changes!

What's Up with the New Catalog?

The next time you go looking for something in the Libraries’ catalog, you might notice that something’s different. What’s up with the new interface?

We’re glad you asked.

After months of testing and lots of feedback from you—our students and faculty—we’re introducing a new catalog.

The new catalog is simpler, more forgiving, more comprehensive, and more like the typical search engines you use every day.

The new catalog comes with a number of features not in the other one, including:

• A single search box, just like Google
• “Did you mean?” suggestions for misspelled words
• More relevant results
• A tag cloud of related terms and associations
• Clickable categories that let you limit results—by format, year, author, library location, etc.
• More stuff!

The new catalog searches across our Libraries' resources, picking up images, digital collections, library web pages, expanded Special Collections holdings, and other items that don’t appear in our other catalog.

But wait, there’s more!

One of the most interesting things about the new catalog is what you—not just the Library—can add to it. Using “My Discoveries,” you can tag, review, list, and rate any of the Libraries’ holdings—in effect, letting you take an active role in how information is organized.

We think you’ll like the new catalog. But if you're looking for our other catalog, don’t worry, we’re keeping it. You can switch to the “Classic Catalog” view at any time.

If you have any comments or questions, please let us know. We’re constantly improving our technology, and we’d love to know what you think.

RefWorks, ProQuest, CSA outage Saturday, April 10

ProQuest® will be performing infrastructure maintenance from 9pm this Saturday, April 10, 2010 until 9am the next morning (a 12-hour window).  During this time none of the following databases will be available:

    Accounting & Tax
    American Film Institute Catalog
    American Periodical Series Online
    ARTBibliographies Modern
    ASSIA (CSA)
    Avery Index (CSA)
    British Humanities Index
    Chicago Tribune, Historical (1849-1985)
    Communication Abstracts
    Conference Papers Index
    Design and Applied Arts Index
    Digital Sanborn Maps
    Dissertations & Theses (ProQuest)
    Ethnic NewsWatch
    GenderWatch
    Index Islamicus
    International Bibliography of the Social Sciences
    Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts
    New York Times, Historical (1851-2005)
    PAIS Iinternational and Archive
    PILOTS
    Social Services Abstracts
    Wall Street Journal, Historical (1889-1991)
    Worldwide Political Science Abstracts

RefWorks will also not be available, but only for 2 hours, from 9pm - 11pm Saturday, April 10.

Our apologies for any inconvenience.

Library Pilots a New Ebook Program

During the months of March and April, when you use either of the Library Catalogs you may notice many more electronic, or ebook, titles than before.  Over 70,000 ebooks are being made available to the WU community as part of a pilot project at the Libraries.

 

The pilot is a way for the Libraries to gauge interest in ebooks.  The titles in the pilot are not actually purchased by the Libraries until you click on and read the ebook.

 

If you choose an ebook title that is part of the project, you will be prompted to enter your WUSTLKey before you continue on to access the ebook content. 

 

We’re interested in hearing what you think of our new program!  If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact Kate Sathi in Acquisitions at ksathi@wustl.edu.

ScienceDirect and ProQuest Outages 1/23 and 1/30

ScienceDirect will be unavailable due to scheduled maintenance for approximately 12 hours from 7am to 7pm this Saturday, January 23, 2010.  This will affect all ejournals, ebooks, and reference works whose URL begins www.sciencedirect.com.

ProQuest® will be performing infrastructure maintenance on Saturday, January 30, 2010 starting at 9pm, for 12 hours.  During this time none of the following databases will be available:

    Accounting & Tax
    American Periodical Series Online
    Chicago Tribune, Historical (1849-1985)
    Digital Sanborn Maps
    Dissertations & Theses (ProQuest)
    Ethnic NewsWatch
    GenderWatch
    New York Times, Historical (1851-2005)
    Wall Street Journal, Historical (1889-1991)
  
We apologize for any inconvenience.

New Resource: Huguet's Dictionnaire

The Libraries have subscribed to the online version of Edmond Huguet: Dictionnaire de la langue française du seizième siècle, the essential reference source for the French language during the Renaissance. With more than 100,000 entries, Huguet’s Dictionnaire contains all the known words of the French language from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. For each entry, spelling variations are provided as well as the word’s translation into modern French.